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Member Publications: Member views not necessarily those of CPG.

War in Ukraine has placed the West at a crossroads: pursue war or peace?

Human security today does not come from the barrel of a gun; it comes from preventive planning. As a middle power, Canada should encourage its NATO allies to think about a better way to build global security.

The Hill Times, 21 March 2022

EDMONTON: It’s a safe bet Canada’s defence spending will get a huge boost in the federal budget soon to be presented to Parliament. Defence Minister Anita Anand, reeling from the demands of the Ukraine war, is openly campaigning for more money and will present “aggressive options” to boost spending to cabinet.

The NATO leadership is demanding more resources, and Canada is made to feel like a laggard because the $22-billion we’re already spending annually on defence falls short of NATO’s magic number of two per cent of GDP (Canada is at 1.39 per cent).

Once again, the powerful voices calling for more money for the military have far more resonance in the media and Parliament than those advocating stronger political and economic measures to build the conditions for peace.

Clearly, the present political system that relies so heavily on seeking peace through military strength has failed—again—tragically, as the heart-wrenching photos of innocent people slaughtered and uprooted in Ukraine show.

Of course, the Russian invasion must be repelled, but the failed political system that led to the Ukraine disaster must be exposed. The suffering in Ukraine has touched a raw nerve in the West. Will we learn from this terrible experience?

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Putin has shown, in a demented and terrifying way, why the possession of nuclear weapons must be outlawed now

The Government of Canada is sending more arms to Ukraine. That is an attempt to tell the brave people of Ukraine that we are with them in their fight against tyranny. Our concern for Ukraine would go to a higher level if Canada implemented a plan to remove the nuclear cloud from over their heads—a cloud that is swirling around everyone in the world today.

EDMONTON– It’s no longer postponable. Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown, in a demented and terrifying way, why the possession of nuclear weapons must be outlawed now.

Far from closing down the little that remains of nuclear disarmament agreements because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this seminal moment in the history of the 21st century must be seized.

The contradictions in Canada’s nuclear disarmament policies have got to be fixed. Sand castles won’t stop a tsunami. We and our NATO partners can no longer go on professing a desire for an end to nuclear weapons while supporting the military doctrine of nuclear deterrence, which leads to even more than the present 13,000 nuclear weapons.

Putin jolted the world when he warned the West of “consequences greater than you have faced in history” for any interference in his invasion, and then ordered Russian nuclear forces to be placed on high alert. Suddenly a light went on in people’s minds: “You mean, those things could actually be used?”

Throughout the post-Cold War years, people—and governments—have become lackadaisical that these horrendous instruments of warfare that once destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki could ever actually be used again. Putin raised this spectre anew.

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Don’t let finger-pointing doom this key treaty against bioweapons

Representatives to the Biological Weapons Convention, 2015
Representatives to the Biological Weapons Convention, the international treaty banning bioweapons activity, meet in 2015. Credit: Eric Bridiers/US Mission Geneva. CC BY-ND 2.0.

When the US State Department accused Russia of maintaining a biological weapons program last year, officials were putting concerns they had been harboring for years squarely on the record. Meanwhile Russia and China have been accusing US partnerships in Ukraine, other former Soviet republics, and elsewhere of being fronts for nefarious biological activities or bioweapons programs. For some 50 years, the Biological Weapons Convention has been the bulwark stopping countries from including these arms in arsenals and war plans, but some experts warn there is a new interest in the weapons or even a budding biological arms race.

Few doubt that the Biological Weapons Convention is languishing at a critical time. Major world powers are accusing each other of maintaining bioweapons programs and the fast pace of the global scientific enterprise is making it harder for countries to find balance between technological advances and risky biological research. Meanwhile, efforts to strengthen the convention have been in a holding pattern for over 20 years since the United States scuttled negotiations meant to give the treaty a means of verifying compliance. It’s now generally very hard to get anything done at treaty meetings.

The world needs a stronger Biological Weapons Convention more than ever, and this summer, when states meet to review the treaty, the prospects for making progress on issues like compliance, transparency, cooperation and verification are better than they have been for over a decade, if acrimony over bioweapons claims, for starters, doesn’t get in the way.

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The reason of prohibition must triumph over the might of nuclear weapons

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-reason-of-prohibition-must-triumph-over-the-might-of-nuclear/
John Polanyi is university professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and won the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry. This article is based on a talk to the Conference on the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), given in Ottawa on Nov. 30.

With 20 million killed in the First World War and 60 million in the Second World War, mankind showed it could mass-produce death. Then, A-bombs increased the power of weaponry a thousandfold. H-bombs a millionfold. The world took note and in a bold move reduced the number of nuclear weapons to a few thousand.

That is the good news. The bad news is that this residue can destroy civilizations.

How did this new world come into being?

It owes its existence to the power of modern science. But that is also good news; it testifies to the ability of the international community to co-operate while competing fiercely.

For science is highly competitive, while being supremely co-operative. Rarely today does a scientific paper have a single author. And when it does, the list of references makes clear its indebtedness to others.

Isaac Newton’s claim to be standing on the shoulders of giants was genuine. Science shows the ability of competitors to share. Applied to the world at large, that would be transformative.

But how do we combine competition with collaboration? This happens in societies linked by trust. Only occasionally can scientists stop to verify others’ findings. For the most part, they believe their colleagues.

The success of science shows that the trust is well-placed. The widespread desire for freedom to speak the truth also applies to science. We make the penalty for falsehood severe; it is life-long banishment from science.

The trust that exists between colleagues carries an important message: we are all valid observers. Testament to this came from the acceptance of Albert Einstein, a stateless patent clerk, as having the right to challenge science’s highest authorities. This affirmed the most fundamental of human rights: the right to be heard.

Tyrannies hold to a different ethic. For them the truth takes second place to utility. Accordingly, they prove inhospitable to science.

A century ago, German science reigned supreme. But within a decade the Nazis destroyed it. Characteristically, the science they put in its place – racial purity – was spurious. Communism’s false science was that of unending class struggle. Societies that elevate doctrine over truth soon lose sight of the truth.

That is why there is fear today of China. The fear extends to the possibility that it might blunder into war with Taiwan. President Joe Biden stated that U.S. support for Taiwan is “rock solid.” So, too, we are told, is President Xi Jinping’s claim to Taiwan.

Where will the world shelter if these nuclear powers come to blows?

The contending parties are bound by the UN Charter, making aggression a crime. In 1945, following two world wars and the Nuremberg trials, the world demanded an end to “might as the arbiter of right.”

For might is bereft of reason. Reason gave us science; laws of nature and some laws of man. From this came courts where laws are argued. There is a profound difference between that and drawing a gun.

To set aside the gun will, however, require an act of will, opposing the continual call for armaments. The rationale for arming is that others do it. This defies logic, since it is a race to no destination except war.

A turning away from war is evidenced by the decline in interstate violence over the past three-quarters of a century. Objectively, the peace movement is winning.

The aim must be to revitalize the peace movement by issuing a challenge to “ban the bomb” – not merely figuratively, but legally. The legislation exists. It is the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which came into force this year, backed by 122 states (but not yet by any nuclear-weapon states, or Canada).

Such laws have been proposed before, and laughed at. “Not so fast,” their proponents were told. But soon they found that “little by little” meant never. They needed to make a break with history.

One such break ended the burning of heretics, another ended murders sanctioned as duels, a third ended torture en route to slavery.

And then, as now, humanity cried out again for change.

Canadian-organized airlift needed to bring food, medical provisions to Afghanistan

A Canadian-organized airlift this winter of food and medical provisions for Kabul could save some of Afghanistan’s 40-million population and signal Canada’s support for global internationalism.

Afghan women, pictured May 7, 2012, lining up at a UN World Food Program Distribution Point in Herat, Afghanistan. The onerous 14-year military commitment by Canada to Afghanistan means we need to spearhead emergency solutions for Afghanistan’s bereft citizens, before millions of deaths occur this winter due to famine and mass starvation, writes Erika Simpson. 
Photograph courtesy of Flickr/United Nations/Eric Kanalstein

The well of human sympathy upon seeing Kabul’s international airport besieged has dried up too quickly. Pleas to heed the chorus of desperate Afghans are falling on deaf ears. Now U.S. President Joseph Biden’s problem is how to handle Trump-like criticisms, as he lurches toward the next election. While the United States and NATO discuss the lessons learned from the past and whether to stay out of the Central Asian area, we should take swifter action here in Canada.

The onerous 14-year military commitment by Canada to Afghanistan means we need to spearhead emergency solutions for Afghanistan’s bereft citizens, before millions of deaths occur this winter due to famine and mass starvation. And there are other reasons for Canada to act quickly.

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Opinion: An anti-satellite weapon test ban is necessary to preserve peace in outer space

Contributed to The Globe and Mail | 22 November 2021

Russia launched a Nudol missile this past week carrying an anti-satellite weapon, or ASAT, that intercepted Cosmos 1408, a defunct Soviet Union-era intelligence satellite.

This targeted collision of the 2,200-kilogram satellite immediately produced some 1,500 pieces of trackable space debris (fragments greater than 10 centimetres) and hundreds of thousands of smaller pieces. Given orbiting speeds of seven kilometres a second, these pieces can cause damage to any space object hit by them. As the intercept occurred at an altitude of 480 kilometres, much of this debris will remain in space for years to come.

As a result of Russia’s ASAT test, the crew of the International Space Station (including two Russian cosmonauts) had to retreat into the station’s escape capsules as a precaution. As this cloud of debris disperses, it will pose a further risk to the safety of space operations in low Earth orbit, exacerbating the existing problem of accumulated space debris amounting to some 25,000 pieces of trackable size.

Russia made its launch in the wake of similar tests undertaken by China in 2007, the United States in 2008 and India in 2019–with the Chinese test being similarly egregious for the high altitude at which the intercept occurred, thus ensuring enduring debris. Given that such deliberately created debris threatens everyone’s peaceful use of outer space as enshrined in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, destructive ASAT tests represent the apogee of irresponsible state behaviour.

The Outer Space Treaty’s Article IX stipulates that any state party to the treaty–there are currently 110 states, including the four mentioned above–has an obligation to initiate international consultations if a planned activity has the potential to cause “harmful interference” to the space activity of other parties. Russia did not undertake such consultations and has disingenuously claimed that its test did not represent a danger to any space object.

Although several states have issued criticisms of the Russian action, they have not cited the Article IX responsibility, which can have the detrimental effect of undermining the authority of the treaty. If states want to uphold international law, they have to be prepared to call out actions that violate treaty commitments and cite chapter and verse. There has been a troubling tendency of late for states to ignore or play down the Outer Space Treaty, as if to evade the constraints it represents for their own actions in space.

Indeed, the Russian test also points to a larger problem of an accelerating space arms race in which leading space powers accuse one another of “weaponizing” space–while rapidly developing “counterspace” capabilities that hold at risk the space objects of their adversaries.

Diplomacy has struggled to keep up with the threat of this space arms race, but the United Nations General Assembly recently adopted a resolution that will create a new diplomatic process to consider “reducing space threats through norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviours.” An open-ended working group is slated to get under way in Geneva, Switzerland, next year. A key aim of the group is to “consider current and future threats by states to space systems, and actions, activities and omissions that could be considered irresponsible.”

For many users of space, the destructive ASAT test conducted by Russia is a prime example of “irresponsible” state action.

Although Russia and China voted against the resolution creating the group (while India abstained), all states are free to participate in the group’s work and even the opponents are expected to do so. In a perverse but plausible explanation, it has been suggested by some experts that Russia carried out its test now to confirm the efficacy of its ASAT before any move to ban such destructive tests could emerge from the new diplomatic process.

Since a curb on debris-causing ASAT tests would benefit all space actors, a ban could represent an easy win for the new group.

An open letter to the UN General Assembly calling for such a ban was initiated by the Vancouver-based Outer Space Institute and has attracted the support of many international space experts. Given the rivalry among the leading space powers, it will be important for other stakeholders including “middle powers”–like Canada, which has been an early proponent of a ban–and the private sector to advocate for early action on an ASAT test ban if the international community wants to preserve outer space for peaceful purposes.

Paul Meyer is an adjunct professor of international studies at Simon Fraser University and a fellow of the Outer Space Institute.

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